Okay, so let's take this one apart. https://twitter.com/johnrobison/status/1296822547829456896

First, what does "independent" mean? John is ignoring the extensive history of the use of "independent" within disability rights. The independent living movement uses it to mean "without being controlled," or "free."

When you consider @lauralovesian1 's definition of institutionalization, "administrative control over people's lives," which derives from a long history of similar theoretical approaches in the self advocacy and, later, neurodiversity, movements, you see that ...

... functionally, "independent" means "uninstitutionalized." Is John saying some people are too disabled to live free of instututionalization? That would be consistent with what I know of him, but it's not certain.

He does seem to be using it the old individual-model way.

This way, mostly used by people who are ignorant of disability rights, means "without assistance." It's a very naive and ill-informed way to use the word, because nobody in human society is without assistance.

Or does John imagine he raised and slaughtered his own meat, tended and harvested cotton and clothed himself with it, built the roads he traveled on and machined the vehicles he traveled in?

No. He means that whom society supports or doesn't is neutral and beyond challenge.

He means that disabled people who do not *get* the supports they need to be self-determining, or independent in the independent living sense are "too disabled" for those supports.

There is a difference in English between "this wheelchair is too wide for that door" and "that door is too narrow for this wheelchair." The second noun, the object, is positioned as fixed and neutral. The first, the subject, is defective.

Similarly there is a difference between "Some people are too disabled for independence" and 'The independence-ensuring supports we provide are inadequate for some people.

The former is a denial of a fundamental tenet of neurodiversity and a statement of futility.

The latter is a statement of fact, couched in the values of neurodiversity and is a statement of unfulfilled promise. To the neurodiversity advocate it carries an imperative: fix the services.

Are parents afraid? I am sure many are. I would be. The services and supports, the structures and commitments, aren't there yet for their kids. I'm sure many of the kids, looking into the adult world and seeing the paucity of opportunities, are scared too. I was, and am.

But we can tackle the situation that inspires those fears head-on, or we can shrug, say "I don't have to work toward justice. I'll just blame the people who have not had the same privileges as I."

That is a moral choice with practical consequences.

So it matters when someone with John Elder Robison's reach abandons the least dangerous assumption, abandons the presumption of competence, abandons the notion that the many advances we have seen in his lifetime alone can, must, and will be followed by many more.

It matters when he preaches that it's hopeless; that some people are too disabled for the most fundamental of disability rights. It matters because he has the reach to be instrumental in stunting lives. And that is not okay.

The question we ought to be asking is not "Are some people too disabled for disability rights?" but "How do we advance the rights of those whom disability rights has not yet reached?"

And the answer to that is complicated and not fully worked out and not yet Twitter-fiable.

But the self-advocacy and neurodiversity movenents are making progress.

Shout out to the many people doing the work.